


Poor Tom

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [14]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: F/F, Fenris Rangers (Star Trek), Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Meet the Family, The Shovel Talk, xBs (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: “You’ve been a busy lady -” Tom Paris remarked, even as Raffi said, “Is this where you explain that if I hurt Seven you’ll beat me to death with a shovel?”
Relationships: Raffi Musiker/Seven of Nine, Tom Paris & Seven of Nine
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 24
Kudos: 58





	Poor Tom

_“It’s not about the Freecloud bankers,”_ Raffi heard, as she was mooching along the side of the Mess with a pair of bottles caught in one hand, ah, pretending she couldn’t sleep. (She’d met a fair amount of Agnes in the middle of the night watch. Also, ah, lacking in sleepativity. Sometimes Cris. _Anyway.)_

 _“I think it is about the bankers,”_ she heard Seven say in reply.

_“And it’s not about -”_

_“I already sent in my resignation, Paris, you can show it to whoever needs to see you aren’t harbouring blood-thirsty maniacs.”_

Raffi heard a gusty sigh, mediated through the less-than-solid bulkhead of Seven’s cabin and her comms-console. _“It’s not about - godammit, Seven.”_

Whoever she was talking to, Seven probably didn’t want this broadcast to the ship at large, at least without knowing… Raffi scraped at the door.

It slid open to her touch. Huh. 

And, in the low light of the xB’s quarters, Seven sat facing a holographic view screen. She was bolt upright, her spine straight as the proverbial poker, hands on knees and her face nearly expressionless. Someone Seven knew well, then. Someone Seven trusted to read the muted affect which came to her naturally, instead of having to exaggerate every facial tic and gesture. (Playing to the balconies, Seven called it once. Not a lie - never a lie - just, meeting the expectations of the culture she survived in.)

The man in the viewscreen said softly, _“Just lay low for a year, we’ll throw our PR guys at it, you can come back then.”_

Raffi saw one of her lover’s eyebrows cinch up a bare fraction. The man said, wryly, _“A little warning would have also been lovely.”_

Seven made a tiny movement that would have been a head-toss elsewhere. “I had a window with Bjayzl and I went for it.”

The man sighed again. Then he turned, to stare at Raffi. The crows-feet at his eyes deepened slightly. _“Ah, if it isn’t the famous Lieutenant-Commander Raffaela Musiker,”_ he said lightly.

Raffi eyed him consideringly. He had the face of someone who’d been ‘boyishly handsome’ as a youth and then seen a lot of weather. Lovely cheekbones, close-cropped greying hair with a few fading traces of blond. He was dressed in the same functional drab that Seven had worn when she first came aboard - work-a-day and sturdy, not a rank tab in sight. There was only the little location stamp at the bottom of the screen blinking _Imladris Station_ to indicate who he was. The Fenris Rangers had a fairly occult command structure, clannish and obscure to outsiders, but Raffi took a guess. “Am I honoured to meet the infamous Poor Tom?” she asked.

The man winced. _“Just plain Tom will do. Mr Paris, if you prefer formality.”_ His head turned. _“Seven, my dove, can I have a chat with your lady-friend?”_

Seven flicked a generous finger.

_“A private chat.”_

Another eyebrow tic, sardonic but amused, then Seven stood gracefully, tugging one of the forgotten bottles out of Raffi’s fingers. “Play nice,” the xB said dryly.

Raffi slipped into the vacant seat, warm from Seven’s body, and considered Poor Tom.

He had the look of Raffi’s very first XO, and the third, and the sixth - that look that said he knew every sin she’d ever committed and would go on to do and promised to love her anyway - but she’d sweat first.

Raffi ignored the instinct to straighten her spine. Decades of sweat and sin aside, she’d been that XO herself, and she knew how much of the Look was lies papered over wire and baling twine. She sprawled in her seat and swirled her bottle. (It was Ramune soda, made the old-fashioned way on Earth and pilfered from Cris’s trading stock. The glass marble in the neck rattled as she moved.)

 _“You’ve been a busy lady -”_ Tom remarked, even as Raffi said, “Is this where you explain that if I hurt Seven you’ll beat me to death with a shovel?”

Tom hesitated. _“Seven can do that herself,”_ he said eventually.

“But you don’t want her to have to. That’s reasonable. Fenris Rangers are family, right?”

 _“Oh, we go back further than that,”_ Tom said. _“I was there when they reclaimed her from the Borg, stripped half her parts off, and told her she was going to be human now.”_

“You don’t make that sound like a joyous event,” Raffi said, tilting her head.

_“She hated us all for years. Just… didn’t know how to say that part out loud.”_

Raffi could feel her face tightening.

 _“It got better,”_ Tom assured her. _“Look at me, I feel like I’m giving you baby pictures. First solid food and so on.”_ He paused, reflective. _“The Rangers have had better luck with our newer xBs - just having someone who’s walked that road ahead of you can help. And they do make for brilliant mechanics.”_

“Is that so?” Raffi asked, leaning back and taking a long swig of her Ramune.

_“Seven is precious for far more than her piloting. Or her accuracy with a phaser.”_

“‘I do not value the sword for its sharpness…’” Raffi drawled.

_“Something like that.”_

Raffi drank again. Looking closer, she saw a small glistening stain on his drab shoulder that looked just like baby-burp. Hmm. She gestured, “You’ve got -” 

Tom sighed. _“New grandkid,”_ he said ruefully, mopping carefully at the slick with a handkerchief, _“you know how it is.”_

Raffi twitched. And, because she knew the kind of XO Poor Tom was, had _been_ that XO, she knew he hadn’t really taken his eyes off her.

 _“How’s the drinking working out?”_ he said casually, still mopping.

She sipped again from her soda. “I’m off the horgl, for the moment,” she says carefully. “Everything else is kinda social. You know. _Really_ social, not, _alcoholic_ social.”

Tom made a wry face. _“Some roads are hard to walk alone.”_

“You’ve been down there?”

His mouth twisted, pained and halfway fond. _“Different road; same hell.”_

“What I’d _give_ to be young and innocent again?”

_“Would you?”_

She drank again. “Naaaah…” she said. “Past Me was a dope.” She wrinkles her nose. “Real cute, though.”

Tom laughed. _“I’ll drink to being young, pretty, and stupid, any day that ends with a Y.”_

Raffi raised her bottle in salute.

 _“Aaaanyway, I’ll leave you two to your… quiet time.”_ He waggled his eyebrows salaciously. _“You know how it is. Ships to wrangle -”_

“Grandkids to dandle.”

 _“You will call me if Seven needs anything,”_ Poor Tom ordered.

Raffi saluted with the bottle again.

 _“And if_ _you_ _need anything,”_ he added.

Raffi tilted her head.

_“I mean it. You don’t have to walk the road alone.”_

Raffi smiled wryly. “Will do,” she said, and tapped her forehead with her fingers even as Poor Tom flickered out.

She sat in silence for a moment, looking at the space where he’d been. “Isn’t that a thing,” she breathed.

Then, quietly, a warmth on her shoulder: Seven’s hand.

She looked up and her lover was smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> // _Playing to the balconies, Seven called it once_ \- I read an early interview with Jeri Ryan, where she said she had a bit of trouble getting into Seven’s lines - until she started thinking of the expressiveness as a kind of protective colouration, in a world that does not love ex-Borg. So I thought I’d work that into a story.
> 
> // Tom Paris is an interesting character - he goes a hell of a long way from the self-sabotaging screw-up of season one to “good husband and father”. In two separate timelines even. So I thought he and Raffi might have some interesting perspectives to share. Also, Tom and B’Elanna have my vote for the founders of the Rangers.
> 
> // “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” (J R R Tolkien, _The Two Towers_ ) - the kind of nerd that names his base after Imladris would totally catch that reference.
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> // Also, I just realised that I sorta nicked the "Raffi and Agnes bump into each other in the night, like, a lot" from "all I ask is the where and the want" by jazzfic. And I hope they don't mind. (Go read the story, if you haven't already, it's just lovely.)


End file.
